A blog by journalism students at Jschool: Journalism Education & Training, Australia

There are some people who engage your intellect, and some who lower it. It’s a little hard to think of myself as anything but the latter. I’ve never been able to really decide what I wanted to do with myself which leads to a sort of distractedness and sloppiness in most things I do. Which is one of the many reasons I’m so late to the ‘I’m-bloggin’-on-the-jschool-site‘ party.

By the time I reached my last year of High School, I realized I couldn’t just sit around, contemplating things so far out of my horizon and yet somehow barely concentrating on the chaotic and vibrant world that was going on just outside my line of vision. The thought of going out into the big wide world was incapacitating for me, someone who until a few months ago had a panic attack when I had to answer the phone or get on a bus. But I knew I had to do something to force myself out of my contained, controlled world and into something different. Not only to further my education but also to better myself as a person.

The decision to study journalism came halfway through the year, mainly because; I liked the news (not completely, but there was an interest there), I had perceived it as a potential career prospect more than a few times, and I had already been writing articles (bland, colurless, boring articles, but articles nonetheless).

I experience an eternal conflict between my inability to believe I am capable of doing things, and this yearning to prove wrong to the people who believe I am simply a boring, arrogant or dull person.

This odd mixture of capability, incapability, desperation, depression, confidence and doubt leaves me in a limbo I have no choice but to rally against, and have been rallying since I was young, and I relish in a chance to push myself further out into the world and expand my knowledge through the remainder of this course.